G20 countries commit to regulating cryptocurrencies according to FATF standards

All G20 countries have signed a joint declaration in Buenos Aires in which they promise to adhere to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards for regulating and combating the use of cryptocurrencies for financing terrorism and money laundering.

“We will regulate crypto-assets for anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism in line with FATF standards, and we will consider other responses as needed.”

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has created the FAFT as a policy-making organization to fight terrorism financing and money laundering. Earlier this year, the association started searching for solutions to implement binding rules for global regulation of crypto exchanges. Th FAFT has also considered new market realities when outlining regulations.

The G20 declaration also mentions that they are taking into consideration “other responses” as well and the countries will keep monitoring the global economy which is going through a rapid digitization. According to the declaration, the FAFT “would seek a consensus-based solution to address the impacts of the digitization of the economy on the international tax system with an update in 2019 and a final report in 2020.”

Back in July, the G20 forum issued a communique in which it revealed its plans to apply anti-money-laundering standards for the crypto industry by October.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB), led by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, is the forum’s regulator. The FSB is set to develop a framework for monitoring the crypto sector and the regulator has already published a set of metrics for this purpose. The FSB framework mentions that:

“The objective of the framework is to identify any emerging financial stability concerns in a timely manner. To this end, it includes risk metrics that are most likely to highlight suck risks, using data from public sources where available,”